A rally was organized at the ILWU Local 10 Hall in San Francisco to celebrate Black History Month. Scheduled speakers and artists included Angela Davis, Rev. Cecil Williams, Martina Davis-Correia, Robert R. Bryan, Gerald Sanders, Richard Brown, JR Valrey, Pierre LaBoissiere, Tayo Aluko, Jack Hirschman, Aggie Falk, and Upsurge. Angela Davis did not make it for some reason.

Let's see. An outfit that proudly endorses all Democrats, the ILWU, had a bull session at which KPFA says 300 people out of the 7 million people living in the Bay Area showed up. From the pictures, I suspect they were generous with the count. One of the people who did show up to pontificate was the infamous friend of the real estate industry and its puppet, the current reactionary Democratic mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, and friend of the murderous crook for assemblyperson and SF mayor, Willie Brown, the good Democrat Cecil Williams. Just the fact that Cecil Williams was listed as a speaker was good enough reason to not show up, although most likely with Angela, she simply had too many things to do, and the same is true of most of the other 7 million people in the Bay Area. We are exhausted from the work week; we have dozens of things that must be done on the weekends, and for lots of people, Valentine's Day is a big thing, especially if you have a loved one in the hospital or in some similar circumstance. Since it is obvious to most of us that our lives will not be changed one iota if we show up at this hot air session, we do not show up at hot air sessions. We are all against racism, police killings and the like, but attending this hot air session is not going to stop either racism or police killings. WE NEED SERIOUS LABOR ORGANIZING in this country as labor is only 13% organized. THE POLICE STATE AND WAR MACHINE HAVE GROWN AS LABOR ORGANIZING HAS DECLINED. It is the comparative prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s, made possible by the labor organizing of the 1930s and 1940s, that made possible the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Labor should spend ALL OF ITS TIME AND ALL OF ITS MONEY LABOR ORGANIZING, and stop supporting the Democrats. Obama has appointed 3 Republicans to his cabinet and a staunch friend of Israel, Rahm Emanuel, as his chief of staff, has his vice president Biden promoting war in Iran and engaging in anti-Russian saber rattling, promotes trade war with China, promoted war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, promoted giving tax dollars to religious organizations, promoted secret rendition, a fascist illegal torture program by definition, and promoted obscuring the chemicals in the Light Brown Apple Moth genocide scam. We are witnessing a seamless transition from one reactionary spokesperson for the capitalist class to another eractionary spokesperson for the capitalist class. Please, folks, no more bull sessions; let's see some serious labor organizing, before a completely fascist state is set up, and that is clearly what is coming if labor sleeps.

But you can bet that I've got the energy to rant online about the entire labor movement and democrats and blame it all on Local 10. Never mind that Clarence Thomas had some choice words for those who think that Obama's election means we have arrived in any serious way. I wouldn't even know that because I didn't go nor listen to any of the audio from the event. I just make up my mind and that's that -- it doesn't matter what actually happened or what was said there. I'll even use ALL CAPS to show you how serious I am about all of this. Not that I'm doing anything myself to help change the situation, mind you. That's someone else's job. I'm too tired, and valentine's day is a big deal, way bigger than showing my support for a union that shut down the ports for Mumia (whom most democrats won't come near with a ten-foot pole), that shut down the ports to protest the war (when not a peep was heard from most democrats about how wrong the invasion was). Way bigger deal than hearing what Martina Correia has to say about some wrongly-convicted dark-skinned convict on death row in Georgia and what I can do to help. Cecil Williams was there, so nothing else matters. Neither do stories of other death row inmates matter. Nor what some former political prisoner from the Black Liberation Army has to say. Nor do I need to hear about the anti-democratic conditions in Haiti. Nor what friends of Oscar Grant have to say or how I can help the San Francisco 8. It was all just a bunch of hot air. So instead I play guilt by association -- and because Cecil Williams was there, and despite the fact that he's helped thousands of the poor in SF over many decades, he's worked with the powers that be in SF sometimes and was asked to speak at the event yesterday, meaning the ILWU Local 10 is in the pockets of the democrats, real estate developers, warmongers, and probably Satan himself -- and the whole event was pure bunk, not one good thing or one useful piece of information was conveyed. And you can believe that I'm not going to spend any of my precious time doing anything myself to build a stronger labor movement in the Bay Area, not by attending this event nor by doing anything else. Well, except for ranting in the comments here. It was Valentine's day for Pete's sake.

The last post was totally right on, despite their irony having the intent to say the opposite.

What the fuck is to be accomplished in a celebrity glad-handing fest, where the greatest accomplishment is patting each other on the back and having another "action" to add to one's activist resume.

The answer: nothing!

And the statement: "Democrats won't touch Local 10 with 10-foot pole," er, choke, gulp, well then, where was Gavin Newsom hiding that 10-foot pole? Up his arse?

Cecil Williams has helped "thousands" while bilking the city for millions, not unlike a Wall St. banker. How many luxury cars does he have? Where does he live? Last I heard, in a mansion in Marin. Let's make this simple, on the streets of the TL where he's universally despised by society's most dispossessed, he's called a POVERTY PIMP!

While I respect the May Day action at 29 West Coast ports last year, as well as the Mumia action way back when, these have got to be put in context: each was a contractually allowed "stop-work" meeting that the union regularly does. The ILWU has X amount of these stop-work options a year, so while admirable it's not like a spontaneous wildcat action of the rank-and-file, rather it's invoking the contract to do these actions for 1 SHIFT (of 8 HOURS) which the management of PMA doesn't like. And the proposals and vote for doing these things are taken well in advance.

And if the ILWU is so high and mighty, why did they get lockedout in 2002 and why did Bush have to force management to accept them back to work under Taft-Hartley?

And if they're so fucking race and class conscious, where were they during the organizing for the port troqueros for the May Day action in 2006, mainly at the LA/Long Beach port complex? Answer: nowhere to be seen, although we can be sure many rank-and-filers supported their non-union sisters and brothers driving the trucks around the ports.

To finish, the model for radical labor action is what the working class immigrants did on May Day 2006, in a general strike of mostly Latinos across North America. It was a rank-and-file direct action. The HOT AIR at the Local 10 union hall with all the celebrity activists might as well have been a Democratic Party Convention.

And Willie Brown, the ethnic cleanser of Hunters Point and bedfellow of subprime kingpin real estate developers at Lennar? The sweatheart deal with the latter is textbook capitalist corruption and would have made his predecessors like Richard Daly and Boss Tweed proud. Having an elected crook like Brown present would have been enough to stay away. Anyway, what does he have to share: tips on doing backroom deals while snorting coke with call girls? Or would everyone just be a passive audience listening to Slick Willie brag about his Ferrari and $1,000 Italian suits? Labor is gonna improve with the presence of these scum?

What have you done lately to help people (er, "celebrities") of color who have been murdered, abused, or wrongly imprisoned?

Have you fought for and won the right for work stoppages at your workplace in order to protest injustices outside of your workplace? Maybe since work stoppages are so weak, you've fought for and won something even better for your comrades or the world. Please, do tell.

It'd be great if the oh-so-pure-never-once-ever-compromised-but-never-actually-accomplished-anything-either-self-appointed-high-and-mighty-above-the-dirty-mucky-muck commenters here spent their time organizing across racial and class barriers and announcing wonderful events and actions instead of pick, pick, picking at what others are doing. If you can do better, do it, do it now. Please.

BUT ENOUGH WITH THE ALL-CAPS SELF-RIGHTEOUS BLATHERING AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!

Da Mayor didn't speak yesterday, wasn't listed as an attendee, wasn't recognized by anyone speaking (as Cindy Sheehan, in attendance was near the end). I was there, and if Willie Brown was too, I didn't even see him. Same for Newsome. It was a public event and anyone could come, but no one was fawning over those two. This idea that it was a big democratic party hoe-down is a farce. The only Democrat even mentioned in three hours was Obama and not in a good way.

I STAND CORRECTED. MUMIA, NOT ILWU. THANKS FOR POINTING THAT OUT. SORRY!!!

AND NOW THAT WE UNZIP AND LOOK DOWN AND SEE WHO'S RESUME IS LONGEST, YES I AM A FORMER MEMBER OF ILWU AND WAS AT THE PLANNING ACTION FOR MANY OF THOSE WORK STOPPAGES AND THEN ON THE DOCKS, OR THE STREETS, WHEN THEY WERE PUT INTO EFFECT.

AND YES, I'M HIGHLY CRITICAL OF "HOT AIR" SESSIONS THAT MY UNION PUTS ON, IN THE SAME WAY ILWU IS ALWAYS PUTTING A FEATHER IN ITS CAP. THE LONGSHORE DIVISION HASN'T HAD A STRIKE SINCE 1971, AND THAT SAYS A LOT.

DESPITE WHAT ANYONE TELLS YOU, HARRY BRIDGES WAS CP ALL THE WAY. RECENTLY, WHEN STALINIST STATE CAPITALISM COLLAPSED IN THE FORMER USSR, RECORDS WERE OPENED UP THAT SHOWED THAT HARRY TOOK MARCHING ORDERS FROM MOSCOW. FROM THE WORLD WAR II PERIOD ONWARDS, THAT MEANT BEING THE BOOTLICKERS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. IT ALSO MEANT THAT IF MOSCOW TOLD THE CP TO TELL ITS UNION LEADERS IN THE U.S. TO HAVE CONTRACTS WITH NO-STRIKE PLEDGES, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT CP-ERS LIKE HARRY AND THE ILWU DID.

IF THIS EVENT WAS ABOUT ENDING RACISM, WHY NOT HAVE PEOPLE FIGHTING AGAINST LENNAR'S YUPPIE DEVELOPMENT IN HUNTERS POINT? OR PEOPLE FROM EAST OAKLAND TRYING TO ORGANIZE IN THEIR COMMUNITY AGAINST THE BLACK-ON-BLACK AND BROWN-ON-BROWN VIOLENCE? BRINGING IN THE ACTIVIST-EXPERTS AIN'T GONNA DO JACKSHIT FOR THOSE COMMUNITIES!!!

WHY NOT BRING IN NADRA FOSTER TO TALK ABOUT RACISM AT KPFA AND HOW THEY SICKED THE PIGS ON HER. BUT NO!!!!, THE "OLD GUARD" AT KPFA IS TOO COZY WITH DEMOCRATIC PARTY TYPES WHO DON'T LIKE ROCKING THE BOAT WHEN THEY'RE BASKING IN GLORY AT OBAMA'S ELECTION. THIS WHOLE EVENT SMACKS OF OLD GUARDS, WHETHER ILWU FORMER CP-ERS OR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HACKS THAT MAY AS WELL BE THE SAME GROUP!!!

From the days of the CIA"s election fraud gang, the People's Temple, to today, Glide Church and its chief hustler, Cecil Williams, are on the job for the Democrat-Republicans perpetrating election fraud all to maximize the profits of the capitalist class.

The People's Temple was a CIA gang, with Jim Jones as its infamous leader, sent to the Bay Area to bust the black liberation movement of the 1970s. It was a cult with all the horrors we have heard about such superstitious, anti-women gangs, namely child and female abuse, glorificiation of male chauvinism and the like. It also committed election fraud regularly for the Democratic Party in the 1970s, including the election of George Moscone to be mayor of San Francisco in 1975, resulting in Jim Jones being appointed chair of the SF Housing Authority, a favorite political plum and an organization also used to perpetrate election fraud in San Francisco. Jim Jones ended his life and almost 1,000 other people's lives, mostly black people, by forcing, kidnapping or otherwise stampeding them to a CIA bastion, Guyana, where the CIA had overtrown tthe democratically elected government of Cheddi Jagan, and there they were injected with poison and murdered, adults and babies.

Cecil Williams and his Glide Church were also part of the Democrats' election fraud team in the 1970s, and remain so to this day. For more on the 1970s Democratic Party election fraud, see http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown/pics.html

Cecil Williams is completely bought and paid for by the capitalist class and his presence at anything claiming to fight racism and police brutality is outrageous as he is only there to put a stop to any serious organizing, the only reason the Democratic Party exists. He actively campaigned for Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom, two anti-rent control, pro-real estate fascist thugs, both Democrats.

My advice to the writers of the description of this hot air session: Never pick on 65 year old ladies like Angela Davis for not showing up at hot air sessions. Better yet, tell all the union members you know to do labor organizing as the reason why we have a police state and a military, both of which should be abolished, is that there is no labor organizing. You can tell them to start right here in San Francisco, where most of the private sector is non-union. They can go to all the restaurants and hotels and hand out the union cards. They can then go to all the offices and do the same. If they have 100% union card sign-up at a given place, they can demand the employer sign a union contract or the place will be picketed and shut down until a union contract is signed. The minimum wage for any union contract should be $25 per hour. Until we have universal healthcare paid for with our tax dollars, the union contract must have 100% employer paid healthcare coverage at any HMO or insurance of the workers' choosing for medical and dental care, and all related medical services such as optometry, podiatry, acupuncture, chiropractor and the like. When we have sufficient labor strength, we can have a national general strike to get rid of the private profit system, and put an end to the racist police state and the entire military. This is what is needed.

Just also wondering if the comments do much good when organized labour is facing big choices in the comming year. In fact just today I heard that 61 Pakastanis were murdered by American Imperialist Drones. That Obama shrug avoided Karzai, probably because he is demanding a go home date for the foriegn occupation of Afghanistan. The arguments of using comments usufully ought to keep to creating a path forward for the working class in the fights that it will be facing this year, day to day, as well as on the especial occasions that arrive to celebrate labours victories. The ILWU took a correct position last May Day, when it shut down 29 west coast ports last year and demanded that the U.S. Imperialist Military get out of Afghanistan and Iraq now. That is leadership worth moving to the future with. Why, because it literally leads the whole working class and gives it courage to stand up and fight for its liberation from fascist militarism. It does so nationally and around the globe, and so points a way for the anti-war movement which stands at a constant 70% of the American People and a constant 80 to 90 per cent of the Iraq, Afghanistan and the middle east people. What is true leadership if not showing the path to liberation for the working class. Trade Unions make that the goal so the workers state stays relevant to the world and in each and every country. The aggressive wars launched by George W. Bush are unjust and illegal. The Geneva Conventions of war, an anti-fascist covenant to which the U.S.A. is signed on to, points out that there are three obvious war crimes committed by the U.S. Imperialists thoughout the middle east, 1) the targeting and killing of civilians, 2) the torturing and killing of prisoners of war, such as Guantanamo Bay, Abu-Graib, Bagram, and the hundreds of extraordinary flights to rendition to torture as carried out by the C.I.A., 3) Collective Punishment, such as 'Shock and Awe', the bombing to rubble of hundreds of villages, towns and cities throughout the whole region of the middle east, erstwhile the world's Holyland, in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and now Georgia, and Pakistan. These war crimes must be answered to internationally and nationally. In truth the U.S. constitution says that foreign treaties signed on to by the U.S.A. are the supreme laws of the land. The anti-fascist covenants such as the Nuremburg Trials (1945) chaired by U.S. Judge Jackson says that the planning and doing of aggressive war is the supreme international crime on earth, as it acctuates all other crimes high, low. big and small, and he further states that it is the supreme international crime whether Germany does it or the U.S.A. does it. The liberation side in the anti-fascist war fought to end aggressive war as each nations foreign policy and put in place covenants {Kellog-Briand treaty 1928}, that would point the way forward so that negotiation and collective agree would be how foreign policy would be decided in the future. The ILWU has a proud history of support for the liberation side in the global conflict against fascism. This in not the time to drop the workers flag, and turn away from the unity and struggles for and end to aggressive war. In truth monopoly capitalism is in crisis, because it never did fully understand or support the vast majority of the workers of the world and their anti-fascist covenants, but were in fact financing and trading with the axis-fascist powers before, during and now again with the anti-fascist on-going war. Imperial war machines and their manufactury causes depression because they are not value added but in truth value destroyed. Bush picked up and refurbished the axis discredited military methods such as , Might makes Right, Unilateralism, and Pre-emptive strikes. It is only here that you would lose all sight of the goals for liberation globally when their propaganda has you cheering their means of destruction instead of production. Prescott Bush , George W's Grandfather was on the executive committee of the Thysson Corporation (U.S.A.) and sent huge war materials to the Nazis side from America. Thysson was the German Finance Capitalist who headed up the Adolf Hitler Project in Nazis Germany after the 1933 Nazis coup-d'-etat. Prescott was a leader of the eugenetics (Racist) movement in the U.S.A. See now that W's administration has dumped the entire anti-fascist side and their covenants and put in place the axis powers methods including anti-unionism and anti-communism. You cannot drop the flag of anti-fascist struggle until America sees justice done against the crimes committed (two million Holyland children , elders and adults killed) in its name globally and nationally, or the crisis will get way worse and the ecological green power balances may cross the fail-safe line. It already is passed it in CO2 the burning of fossil fuels, making the re-tooling of the entire industrial revolution to wind, tidal, and solar power a necessity. If you forget to hold high the workers flag at this critical juncture you allow the anti-worker pro-fascist bosses to maintain and strengthen their positions against the goal of the workers to a workers state, which replaces the bosses state. The Trade Unions of America are a vehicle to the workers state, and complete liberation from aggressive war, unemployment, pollution, poverty, ugenetics (raciism} and Gender discrimination. There is indeed a war on the workers. Victory is not with any aggessive war mongering party motivated by monied profits for pollution, where to move is to pollute thusly destroying the ecological balance. Liberation is the workers leading role in the world , not because I say so, but because it is the material need to live life now as a class with enough strength and power to actually win for the worlds peoples, plants and animals. No other class can fully achieve the victory as they have not a working relation to the means of production. and make their money by pollution and destruction of the living ecological balances--exploitation. One other point of need. The matriarchy , gender parity , must be returned to the world. The material laws of harmony and joy of the specie is equality throughout. That is what empires destroyed by Sextus and Prisons. Ecological, green organic balance depends on the functioning of equality. The estranged condition of the man woman question prevails now because of the conquest. Man the hunter and killer has taken over globally as male domination of the worlds' democracy. Woman the most responsible to the creation of life needs to be elected equally, judicially, politicallly, and religios wise throughout society thusly doubling democracy in America, and aggressive war is stopping our species' advance in that direction. My message is that liberation equals disarmament and that brings the elimination of war forever amongst the peoples, and allows the workers state, which is the tool that ends exploitation of labour forever on earth. Workers of the world, unite!! Raise the red flag and show the world the way forward to liberation. Challenge the ruling class on May first, and shut down the worlds ports against aggressive unjust war and its materiale. No Pasaran!!